


Jupeter Drabbles

by ravenously



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: M/M, Multi, Season 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:09:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenously/pseuds/ravenously
Summary: Just smaller prompts/internal thought-based fics from either Juno or Peter's POV.





	1. peter

Juno’s expression is slack-jawed, far away. Peter watches him under guarded lashes, and for the first time, he’s not sure  _what_  he’s seeing. There’s bursts of anger, fear, devotion, confusion, all flashing in quick succession, minuscule bursts of nebulae that leave as quick as they’re found. 

But instead of fading back to Juno’s normal, guarded, faux-annoyed expression, there’s… Nothing. 

The experiments are taking a heavier toll on Juno than Peter realized. Sure, Peter is covered in bruises turning a sickly yellow and purple, sure, he’s rather certain a few of his teeth have been far more wiggly than his super starlet winning smile would prefer, and sure, his muscles ache, a deep and heavy pounding that reminds him ever two second just how bone-deep tired he is. 

But that’s all physical. 

In front of him stands a man who is slowly bruising from the inside out, and Peter is shocked to realize he  _cares_. He cares in ever increasing bursts of empathy, of anger, of fear for this man.

Some of the light leaks through Juno’s gaze, as though he suddenly realizes he’s just standing there, staring. With a jerk, he turns from Peter, pacing the front of the cell like a starved tiger intent on killing its owners, and knowing, deep down, that it’ll kill itself in the process. 

It’s that anger, that will, that…  _passion_  that draws Peter to Juno, he thinks suddenly. And seeing it, day by day, leak into a sullen, scarred apathy, as Miasma’s torture slowly encompasses him… 

He clears his throat and says, bolstering his voice with as much of his normal emulated gravitas, “Juno, dear, will you  _please_  sit down? It does neither of us any good to watch you prance about and waste your energy.” 

Juno’s shoulders stiffen at the first sound of Peter’s voice, and once again, he’s left wondering what the  _hell_  Miasma did to him yesterday. He knows it was different, could feel a strange prickling of his brain, could hear the commotion from the other room, could  _feel_  Juno, far closer than he’s ever felt him before. 

And when he came to the cell, pushed really, Juno was passed out in a haphazard lump on one of the molding bed rolls, his nose a bloody mess and his consciousness gone so deep that he didn’t even twitch as Peter was thrown inside. 

And since he woke up, he can’t stand to look at Peter for more than three seconds at a time. 

With a concentrated effort, Juno’s shoulders relax and he slowly turns to look at Peter again, his eyes lost and confused and having a hard time focusing for a moment before he makes an ugly noise and turns back to his pacing. “Stop telling me what to do.” It’s a childish response, and Peter doesn’t even have to say it out loud for Juno to know it. So he says nothing except for an exasperated sigh. 

Peter lets the silence drag on for seconds, minutes, what must be hours (what is actually two minutes), before he says, dropping the bravado, dropping the theatricals, just letting, for just a moment, Juno to hear his voice, his emotions,  _him_. “Juno, I–” 

He’s cut off as the door on the end of the holding cell’s hallway opens and Peter knows he’s lost his chance. Juno jerks back to look at Peter again, his pupils bouncing, flaring in fear, before he turns back to face the guards that will take them both for another round of Miasma’s torture, another round of operation Make Juno a Plaything, and Peter hopes he hasn’t lost his chance forever. 

Knows now, that the only way to keep himself going, is the promise of being able to talk to Juno, really speak to him, openly, for the first time.


	2. juno

In the fleeting, tired, aching moments in between Miasma’s experiments, Juno finds, more often than not, that his thoughts drift to Peter.

Sometimes, his mind is so ravaged, so tired, so broken down, that all he can muster is images. Blurry images that he fears are his brain trying to keep him alive than anything else. For as complicated and terrifying his feelings for Peter are, he can’t deny it; Peter makes him feel good. 

So sometimes, hanging there in one of her chairs, blood dripping down his nose, his eyes, skin itchy from older, dried blood that mares his face and pockets his pores, he thinks in images. 

It can be as broad as him and Peter in the same hotel room with one another, the implications… The implications terrifying and beautiful all at once. Him and Peter in a park. Him and Peter laying together in the desert outside the Train drop off, thinking nothing of what was to come. 

(Peter walking into his office and he looks  _comfortable_ , like he’s used to this, like this is a regular occurrence, like he’s in Juno’s life.) 

Like with most things in Juno’s life, anger soon follows his thoughts.

It doesn’t help that his reward for these soft, private moments, are often Miasma’s cutting, emotionless voice screeching at him to perform mundane, horrid little acts with his brain. But even without her, even without this torture and the blood and the understanding that he will not be leaving this tomb, the anger fills him up like an ever-rising flood, consuming him and leaving him with the sole thought,  _You don’t deserve these fantasies._

Currently, he’s curled up on his little cot, doubled in half and as intense the pain in his ribs are, it doesn’t compare to the aching emptiness that this holding cell has become since Peter escaped. 

He hates this dependence, this sudden need for Peter’s disgustingly sweet voice, and he hats that Peter has left him. He hates Miasma, and the situation he’s in and his stupid miserable life, and not for the first time, he wonders what the point is, if life is this dedicated to making certain he isn’t happy. 

Juno shivers, and thinks,  _awfully presumptuous to think Life cares about that._  How can he think that Life cares? That it– that’s he’s even a thought on its radar. He doesn’t deserve its attention. 

He wants to weep when the cell door opens, knowing its far too early, he hasn’t had enough time to heal since yesterday, and knowing he’s getting closer and closer and closer to breaking for her. 

–

Sometimes, early in the morning, when the alcohol from the night before still sits in his gut like a hard rock, Juno forgets about his eye. 

It’s easy, half mad from liquor and repression, to roll over and open his lids and wonder why his head hurt, wonder why the phantom pain of blood and gore and anger leaks from the empty socket like a bottomless hole. 

It’s easy to stumble to the bathroom, a fist jammed into his working eye to try and work out the bone-deep bags that he’s certain are just affixed to his skull at this point, and lose himself in his reflection, thinking of his choices, thinking of his life, thinking of… Peter. 

He might not be a miserable barely-human Thing leaking pain and agony into a slowly-rotting, sweaty bedroll anymore, but even so, the thoughts of Peter are still potent enough to feed him in varying shades of comfort and rage.

Only since Peter has he understood what would possess old Roman gods to all but destroy their lives in the pursuit of such maddening, confusing manias.

Juno splashes water on his face and cups a mouthful to drink, his whiskey-brain dulling from the screams of hell to a dull roar. He’ll have to fix that. Might have to convince Rita that today’s as good a day as any for day-drinking. 

(He can hear her voice already. “ _Mista Steel, it ain’t even Sunday! How can you wanna day-drink when it ain’t even Sunday?”_ )

The thought makes him smile, at least, even if as he’s looking in the mirror, it looks more like a grimace, a call for help, than anything even approaching a smile. 

He sighs and sets to throwing on clothes from his floor– doesn’t matter what he looks like underneath his coat, ‘cause it’s a day where he’ll be hiding beneath it like a suit of armor– not bothering to sniff them to verify if they’re still any good.

For a fleeting moment, he imagines Peter’s body laying in his bed, Peter’s hands running across the worn-down wood of the kitchen table. Imagines Peter’s no-doubt extensive skin care routine laying haphazardly along the bathroom counter, annoying in its messiness, but comforting in its presence. 

He buries the thought and digs a cigarette out from the confines of his coat, brushing off lint from god-knows-where and an old candy wrapper of god-knows-what. 

Juno’s hand brushes along the door frame on the way out, and he wonders if Peter thinks of him. He hopes he doesn’t. It would make things easier. 

The halls are quiet at this time of morning, save for the distant snoring of the man in the apartment next to Juno’s, and music playing a floor down, as some jaunty business woman gets ready for her day. It’s a sickening kind of domesticity, of pattern, that Juno wishes he could forget. 

Hatred, he thinks, is easier, because it leaves no room for negotiation. It’s a tantalizing thing to want, too. To remove nuance? Remove the pain of love and happiness and responsibility to replace it with the weight of hatred? 

It might result in a rock on the bottom of the ocean, drowned for all eternity, but at least that’s solid. Juno thinks,  _I hate so much_. And he wishes he could hate more. He wishes he could hate Peter as much as he hates himself. 

But he can’t. And he can’t do anything about it, so he lights up a cigarette and walks down to the street, and pretends that he does, if only to get through the day. 

–

In only his quietest moments, Juno thinks that Peter will call him one day. Or, more in fashion with the times, show up in his life with his cologne foretelling his presence and sweep Juno off his feet. In these moments, everything is perfect, and beautiful, and wonderful and unrealistic in only the most sickeningly horrible ways, and he knows it’ll never happen. 

But he thinks about it, thinks about it hunched over an empty fifth of whiskey, and thinks about it in the quiet, sober moments before he sleeps. He thinks about it when he dreams and feels Peter’s hands brushing across his shoulders, and once, just three days after he left, Juno thinks about it when he sees a sharp-cutting figure across the street and knows it’s not Peter but wishes it was. 

He doesn’t regret leaving, but he does regret his entire being for making that a wise decision. He doesn’t regret leaving, but all at once, he does, if only because he can’t imagine hurting Peter more than Peter has hurt him. He doesn’t want it to be true. 

But he still thinks about it. And sometimes, when he’s certain he’s alone and when he’s certain his treacherous mind won’t be there to taint and torture him like it normally does, he even smiles and thinks about their night together and remembers it fondly, enjoys it for what it was, and in those moments, it’s enough. 

And perhaps Juno Steel is sated.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me at [Tumblr](http://redwoodriver.tumblr.com)


End file.
